al-Jihad

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Al-Jihad , literally “holy war”, also written al-Gihad or al-Jihad , or particularly misleading Islamic Jihad (the name Islamic Jihad usually refers to the Palestinian terror organization) is a former Egyptian terror organization that is now under Aiman ​​az-Zawahiri was absorbed into al-Qaeda . The movement emerged as a youth splinter group of the Egyptian Sunni - Islamist Muslim Brotherhood who were influenced by Sayyid Qutb's books , particularly his pamphlet Signs on the Path .

Several leading al-Qaeda members are or were Egyptians; B. Mohammed Atef , Ali Mohammed and Mohammed Atta . Even Saif al-Adel (actually Muhammad Ibrahim Makkawi) and Zarqawi's successor, Abu Ayyub al-Masri have an al-Jihad background.

Sadat's assassination

On October 6, 1981, during a military parade in Cairo commemorating the crossing of the Suez Canal at the beginning of the Yom Kippur War , Mohammed Anwar al-Sadat was assassinated by four Islamists from the al-Jihad (Holy War) group.

Al-Jihad, a split from Gamaa Islamija led by Abd al-Salam Faraj (Cairo) and Karam Zuhdi (Middle Egypt) and their mufti Sheikh Umar Abd ar-Rahman , a blind professor at al-Azhar University , viewed Sadat as illegitimate Ruler because he did not rule solely on the basis of Sharia law . They saw his assassination as a necessary and appropriate means of establishing the form of an Islamic state they wanted. During sectarian unrest in the area of ​​az-Zawiya al-Hamra in 1981, the Central Egyptian group of al-Jihad murdered six Coptic Christians who were wealthy goldsmiths and, according to their leader Karam Zuhdi, stole five kilograms of gold and 3,000 Egyptian pounds with their help were acquired for the organization. In order to suppress this unrest, around 1,500 opposition members were arrested in the Assiut area on the instructions of Sadat , including Muhammad al-Islambuli, head of the Jamaʿat and the business administration faculty of Assiut, brother of the then 24-year-old al-Jihad member and lieutenant colonel of the artillery Chalid al -Islambuli.

Nine days before the military parade on which he was to drive an armored vehicle, the latter made a proposal to Abd al-Salam Faraj that the three soldiers who were supposed to sit next to him should be replaced by accomplices, that the vehicle should be stopped at the level of the stands and there murdering Sadat with hand grenades and machine guns. He needed ammunition for this (the weapons of the parading soldiers were not loaded) and hand grenades. On September 26, the leaders and subordinates of the groups from Cairo and Middle Egypt, called together in Saft al-Laban, a slum in Cairo, decided to commit the assassination and the subsequent start of a popular revolution in Cairo and Assiut.

Khalid al-Islambuli put the three soldiers who were assigned to be his co-drivers on leave and smuggled three accomplices into the barracks on October 5. Because officers were not searched, he smuggled in rifle ammunition and hand grenades himself.

The assassins brought the armored military truck to a stop in front of the stands in front of the television cameras, stormed it and opened fire with hand grenades and machine guns. The grenades missed the stands, but the bullets killed Anwar as-Sadat, most of whose bodyguards fled, and other people in the stands. The leader of the assassins shouted audibly in the recording of American television: I killed the Pharaoh.

While only one bomb exploded in Cairo, Zuhdi's men attacked Assiut on October 8 to spark the people's revolution. Since this was the first day of the Feast of Sacrifice , which is traditionally spent at home with the family, the surprise blow was made against the headquarters of the security police, which was only manned by a standby service led by a Christian officer. He was beheaded and the Shawish-s, poorly paid police officers, massacred. The Central Egyptian police could not bring the city under their control, but on the day after next paratroopers flown in from Cairo crushed the rebellion.

The hoped-for Islamic popular revolution did not materialize, and Sadat's successor was his deputy, Muhammad Husni Mubarak .

The funeral procession on the day of the funeral was attended by numerous Western politicians, such as the former Presidents of the United States Jimmy Carter , Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford , as well as Prince Charles of England, the German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt , the then President of France, François Mitterrand , and political leaders from the Soviet Union and Africa. Apart from the President of Sudan , Numeiri , and the President of Somalia , Siad Barre , no Arab leader had come to pay their respects to Sadat. His death was even celebrated in Libya and southern Lebanon . In the Iranian capital Tehran , a street was named after Sadat's murderer, but was renamed “ Intifada Street” in 2001 in order to improve Iranian-Egyptian relations.

After mass arrests of Islamists, most were gradually released. Only the captured al-Jihad members were tried in two trials. In the first trial, 5 of the 24 accused - the four assassins and the chief ideologist Faraj, who headed the Cairo group - were sentenced to death and executed on April 15, 1982. In the second trial, 302 people were charged. As the assassins were proud of their deeds and testified, the trial protocols are a valuable testimony to the thinking and attitudes of an Islamist terrorist group.

1980s and later

In the 1980s, the original organization split up, the Tala'at-al-Fatih faction under Zawahiri became the most important heir of the original structure and is generally referred to as al-Jihad, especially since the leader of the rival faction Abbud az-Zumar is imprisoned has been. In 1993 she tried to kill Interior Minister Hasan al-Alfi and Prime Minister Atif Sidqi. In 1995 she committed an attack on the Egyptian embassy in Pakistan, but failed with an attack on President Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kepel, Schwarzbuch, pp. 103–111, especially p. 109.
  2. ↑ Kepel, Prophet, pp. 208–262, especially pp. 224,225
  3. ↑ Kepel, Prophet, pp. 208–262, especially p. 227
  4. ↑ Kepel, Prophet, pp. 208–262, especially p. 230
  5. ↑ Kepel, Prophet, pp. 208–262, especially pp. 230–231
  6. ↑ Kepel, Prophet, pp. 208–262, especially p. 232
  7. ↑ Kepel, Prophet, pp. 208–262, especially p. 208
  8. ↑ a b Kepel, Prophet, pp. 208–262, especially p. 233
  9. ↑ Kepel, Prophet, pp. 208–262, especially p. 234